Throughout my career I’ve been aware of what a title means, not only to myself but amongst my peers. People say, “a title is important”. I ask why? Sure, in terms of rank or chain of command a title is absolutely important. It defines who you are and what you do in a word or two. Certain titles carry respect, others elicit responses like “so, what do you do then?”.
The big ones, CxO, President, VP, Director, even Manager are all reasonably defined. It’s the lower ‘ranks’, if you will, that allow for wiggle room and even some fun. In the absense of a formal title structure within an organization I’ve often assigned titles that instill a certain level of pride within the employee. Take for example a recent employee of mine. We created a department around his skills and expertise, but the board was not keen on assigning him a Manager title. He was “Web Applications Developer” when he started, but his role expanded well beyond that and encompassed all levels of internal applications, workflows, CRM integrations, etc. So we formed the Internal Applications Group and he became it’s Supervisor. I would have loved to have made him “Internal Apps Big Cheeze”, or something like that, but a formal title was requested. It’s a stepping stone kind of title. It shows that he has the ability to lead, and manage, while being a an effective practitioner. I do hope his department expands and he becomes manager soon.
So what am I getting at here? Titles matter, but the mean different things to different people. To the employee it could mean a career path, or a dead end. To a peer it’s judged differently. Think about it, if you were introduced to a VP and a Technician but let’s say both were the same age, had the same length of career and even similar education, how would you see each of those people as individuals.
Put some thought into assigning titles, they have meaning!
